surrounded by photographs of ice-hockey stars, there is always a large bowl of fresh
flowers that Joe Bell himself arranges with matronly care. That is what he was doing
when I came in.
"Naturally," he said, rooting a gladiola deep into the bowl, "naturally I wouldn't have
got you over here if it wasn't I wanted your opinion. It's peculiar. A very peculiar thing
has happened."
"You heard from Holly?"
He fingered a leaf, as though uncertain of how to answer. A small man with a fine
head of coarse white hair, he has a bony, sloping face better suited to someone far
taller; his complexion seems permanently sunburned: now it grew even redder. "I can't
say exactly heard from her. I mean, I don't know. That's why I want your opinion. Let
me build you a drink. Something new. They call it a White Angel," he said, mixing onehalf
vodka, one-half gin, no vermouth. While I drank the result, Joe Bell stood sucking
on a Tums and turning over in his mind what he had to tell me. Then: "You recall a
certain Mr. I.Y. Yunioshi? A gentleman from Japan."
"From California," I said, recalling Mr. Yunioshi perfectly. He's a photographer on
one of the picture magazines, and when I knew him he lived in the studio apartment on
the top floor of the brownstone.
"Don't go mixing me up. All I'm asking, you know who I mean? Okay. So last night
who comes waltzing in here but this selfsame Mr. I. Y. Yunioshi. I haven't seen him, I
guess it's over two years. And where do you think he's been those two years?"
"Africa."
Joe Bell stopped crunching on his Tums, his eyes narrowed. "So how did you
know?"
"Read it in Winchell." Which I had, as a matter of fact.
He rang open his cash register, and produced a manila envelope. "Well, see did
you read this in Winchell."
In the envelope were three photographs, more or less the same, though taken from
different angles: a tall delicate Negro man wearing a calico skirt and with a shy, yet vain
smile, displaying in his hands an odd wood sculpture, an elongated carving of a head, a
girl's, her hair sleek and short as a young man's, her smooth wood eyes too large and
tilted in the tapering face, her mouth wide, overdrawn, not unlike clown-lips. On a
glance it resembled most primitive carving; and then it didn't, for here was the spitimage
of Holly Golightly, at least as much of a likeness as a dark still thing could be.
"Now what do you make of that?" said Joe Bell, satisfied with my puzzlement.
"It looks like her."
"Listen, boy," and he slapped his hand on the bar, "it is her. Sure as I'm a man fit to
wear britches. The little Jap knew it was her the minute he saw her."
"He saw her? In Africa?"
"Well. Just the statue there. But it comes to the same thing. Read the facts for
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yourself," he said, turning over one of the photographs. On the reverse was written:
Wood Carving, S Tribe, Tococul, East Anglia, Christmas Day, 1956.
He said, "Here's what the Jap says," and the story was this: On Christmas day Mr.
Yunioshi had passed with his camera through Tococul, a village in the tangles of
nowhere and of no interest, merely a congregation of mud huts with monkeys in the
yards and buzzards on the roofs. He'd decided to move on when he saw suddenly a
Negro squatting in a doorway carving monkeys on a walking stick. Mr. Yunioshi was
impressed and asked to see more of his work. Whereupon he was shown the carving
of the girl's head: and felt, so he told Joe Bell, as if he were falling in a dream. But
when he offered to buy it the Negro cupped his private parts in his hand (apparently a
tender gesture, comparable to tapping one's heart) and said no. A pound of salt and
ten dollars, a wristwatch and two pounds of salt and twenty dollars, nothing swayed
him. Mr. Yunioshi was in all events determined to learn how the carving came to be
made. It cost him his salt and his watch, and the incident was conveyed in African and
pig-English and finger-talk. But it would seem that in the spring of that year a party of
three white persons had appeared out of the brush riding horseback. A young woman
and two men. The men, both red-eyed with fever, were forced for several weeks to stay
shut and shivering in an isolated hut, while the young woman, having presently taken a
fancy to the wood-carver, shared the woodcarver's mat.
"I don't credit that part," Joe Bell said squeamishly. "I know she had her ways, but I
don't think she'd be up to anything as much as that."
"And then?"
"Then nothing," he shrugged. "By and by she went like she come, rode away on a
horse."
"Alone, or with the two men?"
Joe Bell blinked. "With the two men, I guess. Now the Jap, he asked about her up
and down the country. But nobody else had ever seen her." Then it was as if he could
feel my own sense of letdown transmitting itself to him, and he wanted no part of it.
"One thing you got to admit, it's the only definite news in I don't know how many" -- he
counted on his fingers: there weren't enough -- "years. All I hope, I hope she's rich. She
must be rich. You got to be rich to go mucking around in Africa."
"She's probably never set foot in Africa," I said, believing it; yet I could see her
there, it was somewhere she would have gone. And the carved head: I looked at the
photographs again.
"You know so much, where is she?"
"Dead. Or in a crazy house. Or married. I think she's married and quieted down and
maybe right in this very city."
He considered a moment. "No," he said, and shook his head. "I'll tell you why. If she
was in this city I'd have seen her. You take a man that likes to walk, a man like me, a
man's been walking in the streets going on ten or twelve years, and all those years he's
got his eye out for one person, and nobody's ever her, don't it stand to reason she's
not there? I see pieces of her all the time, a flat little bottom, any skinny girl that walks
fast and straight -- " He paused, as though too aware of how intently I was looking at
him. "You think I'm round the bend?"
"It's just that I didn't know you'd been in love with her. Not like that."
I was sorry I'd said it; it disconcerted him. He scooped up the photographs and put
them back in their envelope. I looked at my watch. I hadn't any place to go, but I
thought it was better to leave.
"Hold on," he said, gripping my wrist. "Sure I loved her. But it wasn't that I wanted to
touch her." And he added, without smiling: "Not that I don't think about that side of
things. Even at my age, and I'll be sixty-seven January ten. It's a peculiar fact -- but, the
older I grow, that side of things seems to be on my mind more and more. I don't
remember thinking about it so much even when I was a youngster and it's every other
minute. Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought into action,
maybe that's why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden. Whenever I
read in the paper about an old man disgracing himself, I know it's because of this
burden. But" -- he poured himself a jigger of whiskey and swallowed it neat -- "I'll never
disgrace myself. And I swear, it never crossed my mind about Holly. You can love
somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a
friend."
Two men came into the bar, and it seemed the moment to leave. Joe Bell followed
me to the door. He caught my wrist again. "Do you believe it?"
"That you didn't want to touch her?"
"I mean about Africa."
At that moment I couldn't seem to remember the story, only the image of her riding
away on a horse. "Anyway, she's gone."
"Yeah," he said, opening the door. "Just gone."
Outside, the rain had stopped, there was only a mist of it in the air, so I turned the
corner and walked along the street where the brownstone stands. It is a street with
trees that in the summer make cool patterns on the pavement; but now the leaves were
yellowed and mostly down, and the rain had made them slippery, they skidded
underfoot. The brownstone is midway in the block, next to a church where a blue towerclock
tolls the hours. It has been sleeked up since my day; a smart black door has
replaced the old frosted glass, and gray elegant shutters frame the windows. No one I
remember still lives there except Madame Sapphia Spanella, a husky coloratura who
every afternoon went roller-skating in Central Park. I know she's still there because I
went up the steps and looked at the mailboxes. It was one of these mailboxes that had
first made me aware of Holly Golightly.
I'd been living in the house about a week when I noticed that the mailbox belonging
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to Apt. 2 had a name-slot fitted with a curious card. Printed, rather Cartier-formal, it
read: Miss Holiday Golightly; and, underneath, in the corner, Traveling. It nagged me
like a tune: Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling.
One night, it was long past twelve, I woke up at the sound of Mr. Yunioshi calling
down the stairs. Since he lived on the top floor, his voice fell through the whole house,
exasperated and stern. "Miss Golightly! I must protest!"
The voice that came back, welling up from the bottom of the stairs, was silly-young
and self-amused. "Oh, darling, I am sorry. I lost the goddamn key."
"You cannot go on ringing my bell. You must please, please have yourself a key
made."
"But I lose them all."
"I work, I have to sleep," Mr. Yunioshi shouted. "But always you are ringing my
bell…"
"Oh, don't be angry, you dear little man: I won't do it again. And if you promise not
to be angry" -- her voice was coming nearer, she was climbing the stairs -- "I might let
you take those pictures we mentioned."
By now I'd left my bed and opened the door an inch. I could hear Mr. Yunioshi's
silence: hear, because it was accompanied by an audible change of breath.
"When?" he said.
The girl laughed. "Sometime," she answered, slurring the word.
"Any time," he said, and closed his door.
I went out into the hall and leaned over the banister, just enough to see without
being seen. She was still on the stairs, now she reached the landing, and the ragbag
colors of her boy's hair, tawn